Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot

Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot

On a scorching July morning in a Colorado that existed before cell phones, streaming, and apps, my friend Michelle and I slathered oil on ourselves and sprawled out on a couple of rickety aluminum lawn chairs in my tiny, unkempt backyard. This was also a time before we became concerned about sun damage, melanoma, and our mortality.My little boombox sat in the shade on the square of concrete that was almost a patio. The spinning gears in the tape deck cranked out The Doors on cassette.Michelle picked up the bong that sat between us, took a hit, and handed it to me. She giggled and said, "Dude. Check us out. We look like a couple of greasy goons."I lifted my head and scanned my skinny white legs, shimmering with fine blond hairs and grease, like a scrawny chicken ready for the oven. The oil covered my face, my hair pulled up tight in a clumsy knot. I took the bong...
Read More
Living on the Periphery of Terrible Things

Living on the Periphery of Terrible Things

It's been a week since Hell hit Paris, and those French flag profile pics on social media are already starting to go away. They won't vanish as swiftly as they appeared. They'll decrease in number, little by little, just like those rainbows from a few months ago. Those rainbows made me happy. I enjoyed opening up my timeline and seeing the burst of color. We'd fought for equality and won. This is how we shout things from the rooftops, now. This was our happiness, translated to small, digital images.Of course, seeing some people ranting about the greatness of the Confederate flag from a rainbow profile made it clear that many didn't give a shit about (or comprehend) equality as much as they do following the photo filter herd while screeching about what they want.Yeah, I got cynical. I forced myself to focus on those I knew were genuinely shouting with pure joy, and I felt better.When the French flag filter...
Read More
People Are Full of Shit, So Don’t Let Facebook Bring You Down

People Are Full of Shit, So Don’t Let Facebook Bring You Down

I keep seeing these articles all over the place. You've probably seen them, too. Using various combinations of words and pictures, they all say the same thing: Facebook is making people feel sad. Depressed. Unsatisfied. Unhappy and lonely. The list of negative sentiments goes on and on.My knee-jerk reaction to the headline was, "Okay, this is just more whiny, paranoid bullshit about the evils of the internet." Then I decided to actually read the article. It doesn't matter which variation of this article you read - the gist is the same. Facebook makes people feel bad because of our absurd human tendency to measure our failure by our perception of other people's success.But here's the thing: we're comparing ourselves not only to everyone else's highlight reel, but to their bullshit, too. We're often looking at our real selves, our real lives and holding them up against personas that are not real. A social media profile might be a window into...
Read More
How To Use Social Networking to Poison Your Friendships

How To Use Social Networking to Poison Your Friendships

In July of 2005, I went to see Batman Begins at the Holiday Twin drive-in in Fort Collins, CO with a friend of mine. We'd been bouncing around in anticipation for several months waiting for this movie to come out. Leaning forward in the front seat of my Oldsmobile, we shoveled snacks into our faces & geeked out. She was one of my geek girl friends. Getting excited for superhero/fantasy/action movies, standing in line to see them, then jabbering excitedly about them afterward was something that connected us.We weren't on Myspace. We didn't have Facebook. We talked in person, over plates of food & big glasses filled with adult beverages. We chatted at the office where we both worked. It didn't matter much that she was a Conservative, Christian gun owner from Texas, or that I was basically the exact opposite of all those things.Sure, we gave each other shit about it. We made a lot of jokes. We also...
Read More
Flowers for Rasmenia

Flowers for Rasmenia

All right, then... it's been almost 6 months since we moved into this house and lost the luxury of a home Internet connection. Now we finally have it again and I can actually refer to an Internet connection at home as a luxury, rather than a necessity.Okay, maybe I really don't believe that. I NEED the Internet. I absolutely need an endless supply of baby animal videos and 10 different columns of nonstop gibberish on Twitter. I require endless stream of commentary on current events to keep me up-to-date and a steady torrent of jingoist YouTube videos on my Facebook news feed to remind me to be patriotic. I MUST have IMDB handy every time I'm watching a movie and can't remember where I've seen that actor's face before. I fucking NEED Wikipedia to be there every time I have the slightest question about every trivial event or mysterious fruit I happen upon in the produce section.These things are IMPORTANT.Well,...
Read More